On Christmas Eve, three guys and two girls meet up at
the Styxx nightclub and decide to take the party back to the country
estate of Eve (Roxane Mesquida of Catherine Breillat's FAT GIRL and
SEX
IS COMEDY) after an altercation between drunken Bart (Olivier Barthelemy), a bouncer, and a broken bottle. Although Eve and her
chateau are elegant, everything else around is decidedly "Deliverance"
country, including grinning groundskeeper Joseph (Vincent Cassel in an
incredibly hilarious performance) and his very pregnant wife and nympho
niece. As the five settle in, they find their partying constantly
disrupted by the expected wierdisms, including Joseph's "special"
attention to Bart. As midnight approaches, Joseph skulks around and his
unseen wife assembles a doll from disparate parts (including a lock of
Bart's hair, torn out by niece Jeanne) - "All that's missing is the
eyes."

Not as transgressive or brutal as it makes itself out to be, especially
when compared to the almost concurrently released CALVAIRE, Capiron's
film is still entertaining even if the director seems to run out of
ideas at the end. Cassel and the other lesser-known actors all give good
performances (Barthelemy makes the sulky and loutish Bart rather
endearing actually) and its nice to see an ethnically diverse cast
without calling attention to the element (except for some of Cassel's
racist remarks). Monica Bellucci also makes a brief cameo.

PAL-NTSC conversion with ghosting
not helped by the softness of the low-light Super 16mm
cinematography. Looks perfectly acceptable on interlaced
televisions but hazier on progressive monitors.

The
soundtrack is available in 2.0, 5.1 and DTS tracks (little
difference between the DTS and 5.1). With a making-of
featurette, Tartan's R1 release has more extras than the
single-disc R2 French release but there is also a 2-disc steelbook available in France with several extras including
(presumably) the R1 featurette.